


All in a Golden Afternoon

by resilientheart



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Psychic Violence, Psychological Horror, Young Evil Queen | Regina Mills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:43:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3290753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resilientheart/pseuds/resilientheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character Study. First part of a three part series. A nightmare/dream sequence. Pre-relationship Swan Queen in the next chapter, although not in Part One. Vague Mentions of Stable Queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All in a Golden Afternoon

 

_What a pretty hollow. What a lovely afternoon. The girl strayed from the tall golden grass of wheatfields to investigate the little copse of trees that stood so close together. She parted low hanging branches and pushed back her hair, moving through a maze of yellow and soft brown foliage that seemed so suddenly like the wide skirts of the Grand Ladies of her grandfather's Court._

_Thump._

_She slipped between Trees and Ladies and laughed against the rustling sounds of wind and branch until she found the center of the copse._

_Rocks in a circle. Covered in moss. A green, deep hollow made of even more moss. The rocks spiraled down to the center, and the girl clung to each slippery stone as she merrily ventured down._

_"How curious and how secure", a voice called out. "A circle of earth just for me."_

_She spun in a circle, lifting her arms to the roof of branches. Laughing faces appeared in the leaves, and she laughed with them. A flock of gentle butterflies flitted down from somewhere above._

_They were blue, like the sky she could no longer see._

_So brightly blue. Their numbers increased. They billowed down from above._

_"Are you becoming born?" The girl stretched her hands out, wanting to feel their fluttering against the tips of her fingers. She wanted to feel all of them._

_Thump Thump Thump._

_The fluttering of butterfly wings surrounded the young girl, their beauty outweighed by the growing, gnawing horror that there were too many. Too many. Surrounding her limbs and eyes and mouth. The girl attempted to run, to run up and out into the field beyond this secret verdant hollow in the woods she'd found. Her legs were frozen. A warmth was spreading up from her bare toes, sickly and soft. But... not spreading up. She was sinking down. The girl attempted a scream. Powdery wings and feathery antenna crowded in, stealing her air._

_Thump. Thump._

_She thrashed and fought. Locusts of crisp, bright green burst into the swirl of exceptionally blue wings. Their multi-sectioned legs and bodies, like tiny men in armor, clicked and thrummed as they alighted upon the girl. she felt them hit her arms. Thump. Her face. Th-thump. They tore at the wings of the butterflies. They were eating them._

_She sunk down into a cottony mire of peat and earth. She felt the ground lifting and expanding as if it were breathing. Could almost see the mossy rocks beyond the swarming insects rolling in toward her._

_She was a dip in the ground. The center of the hollow._

_The girl shook her head, snapped her teeth, her own body seizing and fighting against the oncoming burial. She swallowed down the butterflies and closed her mouth tightly. Nothing would invade her._

_She was being eaten by the earth. Invaded with beauty. She fought that beauty, scraping at her face with rigid hands._

_Thump. Something in her chest._

_Th-thump._

 

_Struggling to get out._

__She'd sunk down into the earth now, only her shoulders and head above the earth._ The girl opened her mouth again to scream, to warn it away. _

_Something crawled up her throat, tearing it. Tearing her lips as it came out._

 

_A baby. A red monster. A red winged moth with pulsating wings. She could do nothing but look at it, look into a multifaceted collection of translucent eyes. Blood pumped through them, through the creature's body. It beat in time with the insects swarming, beat as they blended into a bright collections of pulsating red lights in boxes. Lights lined up neatly in pretty boxes. All in a row._

_"Thief," it whispered, shifting its collection of mouth pieces and chitin into the shape of a familiar human face, "I see you."_

* * *

Regina shouted as she woke, tangled in the blankets and disoriented. She pulled herself free, climbing off of the bed and scrambling to the bathroom. She slammed a hand down on the light switch and gripped the porcelain sink. Her face... Regina stared mutely into the surface of the mirror, noting tears and sweat and a haggard pull to terrified eyes. She shook, leaning forward to press her forehead to the cool surface, mirror image and woman together. 

"I am not a child," she whispered out a quiet mantra, something familiar and practiced, "...and I am safe. I am not a child... I am safe, I am not a thief." 

Except that she was. 

 


End file.
